In this workshop, you will explore how AWS Budgets can help you effectively manage and monitor costs within your AWS account.
AWS Budgets allows you to set custom budgets to track your AWS costs and usage. When your costs or usage exceed (or are forecasted to exceed) your budgeted amount, you receive notifications to help you stay on top of your AWS spending.
ℹ️ Information: AWS Budgets provides near real-time visibility into your current and forecasted AWS spend, helping you proactively manage your costs before they occur.
You can create several types of budgets in AWS:
A Cost Budget provides alerts when your current or projected AWS spending exceeds the cost threshold you’ve set. This is the most common type of budget and helps you maintain financial control over your AWS environment.
A Usage Budget sends alerts when the usage of a specific service or group of services exceeds your defined threshold. For example, you can set a budget to monitor EC2 compute hours or data transfer volumes.
The RI Budget generates alerts based on the utilization or coverage of your Reserved Instances.
ℹ️ Information: Reserved Instances (RIs) provide significant discounts (up to 72%) compared to On-Demand pricing when you commit to a one-year or three-year term for specific EC2 instance types.
With Savings Plans Budget, you receive alerts based on the utilization or coverage of your Savings Plans commitments.
ℹ️ Information: Savings Plans is a flexible pricing model that offers lower prices compared to On-Demand, in exchange for a commitment to a consistent amount of usage (measured in $/hour) for a 1 or 3 year term. AWS offers Compute Savings Plans, EC2 Instance Savings Plans, and SageMaker Savings Plans.
To enable users to create budgets in the AWS Billing and Cost Management console, ensure they have permissions to:
🔒 Security Note: Use IAM roles with least privilege principles when granting access to AWS Budgets. Consider creating dedicated roles for programmatic access to the Budgets API.
AWS Budgets can be configured to take automated actions when a budget threshold is reached. Two AWS managed policies simplify this setup:
💡 Pro Tip: When using budget actions with EC2 instances in Auto Scaling Groups, be aware that the ASG may restart or replace instances that are shut down. Consider adding a second budget action that removes permissions from the Launch Configuration role.
⚠️ Warning: AWS Budgets relies on billing data that updates at least once daily. Budget alerts align with this refresh cadence, so there may be a slight delay between when costs are incurred and when alerts are triggered.
🔒 Security Note: Consider enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) for enhanced account security, especially for accounts with budget management permissions.